Disposable absorbent wipers/towels have many uses. Disposable wipers/towels are particularly popular with do-it-yourself homeowners and trades people who find wipers valuable for cleaning tools, work areas and their hands. Disposable wipers are also used frequently in factories, on farms and in the boating industry (both commercial and recreational). These are just a few of the wide variety of people and multitude of uses of disposable wipers. Frequently, disposable wipers are used by people who are on the go, whether it be trades people moving from job to job, maintenance people moving from machine to machine within a factory or farmers dealing with issues wherever they come up. Containers of disposable wipers thus are often treated as valuable items of one's normal equipment for performing jobs and are often carried in the back of trucks to job sites along with other tools or on maintenance carts in factories. Disposable wiper containers end up in countless types of places, wherever people do work.
Often, because these containers can be used and stored outside, they can become exposed to inclement weather or they can be indoors in dusty and dirty environments. Traditionally, disposable wipers have been packaged in cardboard boxes, the wipers being dispensed through an open hole in the top.
For convenience, absorbent towels commonly are provided as successive sheets on a continuous web wound in roll form with individual sheets separable from the roll by means of perforation lines established at pre-determined distances. The towels are commonly drawn from the interior of the roll, and the perforations allow a user to tear off a portion of the absorbent towel roll. Rolls of toweling may be housed in dispensers, such as cardboard boxes, that allow the user to access the towels, usually through a small opening provided in the top of the box.
A challenge associated with dispensing absorbent towels involves the ability to protect the towels from contaminants such as dirt and water so that on the one hand the effectiveness of the towels is not compromised and on the other hand the towels can be easily accessed by a user. Cardboard box dispensers of the type currently available from Kimberly-Clark Corporation under its “Rags in a Box” trademark, can become water or oil soaked if exposed to the elements or placed on a wet or oily support, resulting in towels within the dispenser becoming contaminated with water or oily residue. Cardboard boxes themselves are susceptible to degradation, especially upon becoming wet. When towels within a box become water-soaked, dirty or oily, they become substantially useless and are discarded.
A solution to this problem is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/870,329, published as publication number 20050046314, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein. That application discloses a water-resistant container having bottom, top and side walls and having a manually graspable exterior handle. A roll of dry, disposable towels is carried within the container, the top wall being vertically movable, upon application of an exterior force, to enable it to be depressed against and supported by the towel roll. An opening in the top wall of the container provides finger access to towels in the interior of the container, the towels being drawn from the container from the interior of the roll of towels.
The container thus described works very well for its intended purpose. However, once the roll of towels has been exhausted, a fresh roll of towels must be inserted in the container, and this may require an inventory of replacement or refill towel rolls to be maintained at or near the job site. It may often be inconvenient to provide a dry and clean storage space for towel rolls. When a supply of replacement towel rolls is not appropriately protected, as, for example, by being stored in containers of the type described above, the supply of rolls may easily become wet or soiled. Moreover, in order for individual towel sheets to be drawn from a replacement towel roll, the roll must somehow be supported, as by placing it in the container.
It would be desirable to provide replacement towels in a form in which they are protected from the elements so that they may be stored in less than clean environments without harm to the towels. It would be particularly desirable to provide a towel roll product in a form in which the towel roll is itself protected from the elements, the product enabling individual towels to be removed from the roll interior without the necessity of placing the towel roll in the container referred to above.